PRODUCT DESIGN & LEADERSHIP

Let’s bring my 16+ years of experience building and leading technology products to your company’s toughest challenges.

I LOVE TO BUILD COMPANIES AND DESIGN PRODUCTS

SPEAKER

I love to talk about my experiences from 16 years of building technology products and running companies. From starting up, to scaling a team, to raising capital, I've been there.

DESIGNER

I thrive on good design and love helping others improve their products. Whether just getting started or redesigning a legacy offering, I'd love to take a look.

ENTREPRENEUR

Building a great product isn't the only step to building a business. I've raised millions in capital, developed marketing plans, and built incredible teams that can move mountains.

Ed is a superb product strategist who thrives on knowledge of the market and competitive positions. He has a particular knack for designing user experiences, and has a way of striking the perfect balance between innovation and engineering.

BUILDING SAAS PRODUCTS
BEFORE IT WAS COOL

In 1999, software as a service (or, “The Cloud”) was brand new. Salesforce.com was just getting started, the first Blackberry was hitting the market, and the initial Bluetooth standard was just being released. I was just getting started as well,
designing websites and graphics, mastering Photoshop version 5.5, and about to enter my 20’s.

Little did I expect that taking my first real job would lead to a long career in the SaaS space and liftime of helping businesses and business people improve their lives.

EXPENSEWIRE

In 2000, I had the opportunity to join SamePage, a six person startup building CRM software for businesses that amounted to Access databases hosted via Citrix. As a youngster, I started out as a customer service person, answering the phone and
chatting with users who had issues with the product.

Over the first few years, I grew with the company, moving from customer service to the development team to managing the MS SQL Servers to eventually running the company’s marketing efforts. At some point, we knew that our business model of
customizing our software for every client would never work and we decided to pivot to an offering that was truly multi-tenant.

ExpenseWire was the result. We built a world-class expense management product for which I had the pleasure of leading the product team. I managed the design and development efforts from concept ideation to acquisition by Foster City-based Rearden
Commerce.

REARDEN COMMERCE / DEEM

Once acquired by Rearden, ExpenseWire’s ~50 person team became part of a 500 person Silicon Valley company who had raised hundreds of millions in capital. I spent much of my time traveling back and forth between Ohio and California, and had a
great opportunity to get to know a culture much different than my own. I got a chance to work with world class industry veterans the likes of which had built incredible products at Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. and who were happy to share
their methodologies and experiences with a young product manager like myself.

HELPING SMALL BUSINESSES
MANAGE THEIR FINANCES

In 2009, I parted ways with Rearden to start my first company as a true founder. Coming from a family filled with small business owners, I understood the pain that entrepreneurs feel when trying to run their companies. My time with ExpenseWire had
provided an education around accounting and cashflow that helped formulate an idea - an easy way to forecast financials for small businesses.

60MO

After months of development and initial customer testing, we launched 60mo (short for sixty months) at TechCrunch Disrupt in the San Francisco in 2010 to some acclaim. We had hundreds of companies sign up within the first week and had a myriad of
meetings with venture firms that eventually led to closing a Series A with Chicago based Lightbank, whose partners were two of the investors behind Groupon.

I moved to Chicago and worked from the Groupon offices, getting to know the Chicago startup scene and another take on the culture of entrepreneurship that was becoming part of my way of life. 60mo grew to a team of ten and our product truly began
to revolutionize cashflow forecasting. But eventually we realized that the only way to properly address the market we were trying to serve was to partner with a company in the accounting software space.

FREEAGENT

In 2012, 60mo was acquired by FreeAgent, the UK's largest web-based accounting provider. Our team became FreeAgent's US product team and was focused on bringing their incredible freelancer accounting and invoicing tools to America's 23m+
contractors and consultants.

Again, I was thrust into a new culture and a different startup scene that, this time, was wholly foreign to me. The way of thinking amongst the Scottish team was something I had never encountered before. Definitively a different way to think about
starting companies.

FORWARD THINKING,
BIAS TOWARDS ACTION

In 2013, it was time to start something new. I had an idea for bringing actual automation to a market I knew very well, expense management. But not just the "faux" automation that the market had seemed to accept to date, but real machine learning driven by big data gathered from credit cards, calendars, email, and more.

EXPENSEBOT

After developing a core expense reporting product, ExpenseBot was accepted into the Techstars Boulder program. This afforded an opportunity to get to know the Denver/Boulder startup scene and meet dozens of smart founders and investors.

We were lucky enough to assemble a great team of investors and grow the team throughout 2016. We continue to be the most innovative player in the expense tracking space.

MENTORING & ADVOCACY

I greatly enjoy working with other entrepreneurs to refine their ideas and develop their products. I've been lucky enough to help numerous companies in Cleveland and elsewhere, including companies attending Techstars, 500 Startups, Bizdom, and LaunchHouse accelerators.

Additionally, I manage a non-profit founder advocacy group for Cleveland startups called StartInCLE. We've built a strong community of founders and are focused on building awareness, network, and knowledge in the Cleveland startup ecosystem.